Revisiting the sins of the father

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A traumatic childhood has been transformed into a moving play,
writes Clare Morgan.

Parents are supposed to love their children - it's a law of
nature. But Tom Scott's father never seemed to know quite what to
do with his brood of six.

As the family grew up impoverished in the New Zealand town of
Feilding in the 1950s and '60s, there was little fatherly
affection. Instead he rained down sarcasm and insults on his
children and his wife. They didn't even have proper names. Egghead.
Horse. Dingbat.

He ended up a bitter drunk, living in the front room of their
dilapidated house, having his meals delivered on a tray and raging
at unseen demons. It sounds grim, yet Tom Scott has turned his
bizarre and abusive upbringing into a funny and sometimes moving
work, The Daylight Atheist, which opens the Sydney Theatre
Company's 2005 season.

Max Cullen stars in the one-man show as Dan Moffat, prowling his
cluttered room as he reflects on his life and the people in it,
assuming their personas as he recounts his childhood in Northern
Ireland, his war service, meeting his future wife, getting her
pregnant and moving to a New Zealand town where "life doesn't just
pass you by - it crosses to the other side of the street when it
sees you coming".

The title comes from Dan's musings that when the sun is up it's
easy to declare that God doesn't exist but it's a different matter
when darkness closes in, buildings creak and sheep cough.

"It's funnier performed than it is to read," says Scott. "When
someone in the audience starts laughing, it gives others
permission."

Wellington-based Scott is well known in New Zealand as an
author, political columnist, cartoonist and screenwriter. But even
this success enraged his father, who turned his back on anyone who
complimented him, and went through family photo albums and removed
his son's face with a scalpel.

Yet after his father's death, Scott heard stories from strangers
about his great kindness to them. And while some of his father's
antics are shocking, Scott says that amid the rage was a
storyteller and comedian.

"My father was a very funny man and a lot of what's in the play
are things he actually said. But it was almost like he had dynamite
strapped to his chest, and you never knew when he was going to go
off. It was nerve-racking and quite distressing for everybody."

While the play is based on his upbringing, "more than half of it
is poetic licence", he says.

It was a hit in New Zealand, grossing about $1 million after it
premiered in 2002, although Scott says that success was due largely
to his notoriety.

"Some people would have gone along because I'm reasonably well
known. But they're getting a bit old now - one more winter and
they'll all be gone."

Reaction to the work revealed that such familial neglect was
more common than people realise, although it sometimes had the
opposite effect: "I had one chap come up to me in tears who said 'I
didn't realise what a good dad I had. He died last year and I never
actually told him'."

Another woman told him she had been brought up by a mother with
schizophrenia but had never told anyone, and avoided bringing
friends home for fear her mother might do something
embarrassing.

"It's just like Spike Milligan said: 'everyone's life is a mass
of ragged underwear'."

Scott says that at the time, the family didn't realise their
life was so different to anyone else's: "You don't know until you
start seeing other peoples' parents how strange your life is."

What set them apart, though, was their poverty, especially since
New Zealand was then among the wealthiest countries in the world.
"During that period we lived in pretty rundown houses among wealthy
farmers with grand houses with big curving driveways and front
rooms and lovely furniture," he says. "One of the houses we lived
in was so bad it was condemned and bulldozed by the health
department."

It didn't take him long to realise they were regarded as "the
strange Irish family from down the road".

"The neighbours down the road used to invite me for lunch.
They'd ask how things were at home and how everyone was going. I
very quickly learnt that they wanted to hear funny stories about my
family."

He adds with undisguised glee: "I made my hostess wet her pants
more than once."

The family's loveless upbringing has had some impact - his twin
sister, Sue, has no memory of her childhood - but all emerged
surprisingly unscathed and went on to establish good careers.

"Statistically, we should have all turned into bed wetters and
wife-beaters and alcoholics but we didn't. We've all done
well."

Once Scott was persuaded to write the play, the words came
tumbling out and he had his first draft ready within three weeks,
although it was a draining process.

"Writing it wasn't so much cathartic as wrenching. One day I was
on the couch having a rest and picked up a magazine here called
Metro, which had a story about a man whose father who had
died of cancer. It was a beautiful piece about what a wonderful
father he was and I found myself weeping softly. I was just stabbed
through with envy. Then I thought he could write f--- all of a play
about his father."

He discussed the work with his family; they asked if he would
stop if they asked him to and he said probably not. In the end he
agreed to his sister's request that he change some details and set
it in a different place.

"My brother came to one of the first readings and cried all the
way through, which was a bit unnerving."

Three of his siblings have seen the play, and it wasn't as
horrifying as they thought it would be. His mother hasn't seen it,
and Scott doesn't want her to. "Even though only a third of it is
true, that third would be just devastating."

Still, she had a very Irish reaction when he told her he was
writing the play: "She was very hurt when I told her I was writing
this story, and said don't I dare darken his name. Then she got all
weepy and said 'He was a bigger bastard than you'll ever
realise'."

The Daylight Atheist opens at the Wharf Theatre tomorrow and
plays until February 20.